The cost of getting by

By Eliza Bellones

A week into being in Australia, I stopped bracing myself for inconvenience. Commuting was efficient, public spaces were accessible, and basic services worked without demanding extra patience or strategy. None of this felt extraordinary — only unfamiliar. It took being here to realize how growing up in the Philippines had trained me to expect systems to fall short.

In the Philippines, basic services often feel conditional. Healthcare access depends on time, money, and sometimes connections. Public spaces are unevenly maintained, and infrastructure frequently requires citizens to adjust rather than rely on it. From a young age, many Filipinos learn to navigate inefficiencies quietly. We plan for delays, anticipate inconvenience, and accept dysfunction as part of daily life. Over time, this becomes normal.

This normalization is where the idea of diskarte takes root. Diskarte is often praised as a uniquely Filipino trait — resourcefulness, adaptability, resilience. It is celebrated especially among the youth, who are expected to juggle responsibilities early and find ways to survive despite limited support. While resilience is undeniably admirable, experiencing life in Australia made me question whether diskarte is always a strength, or simply a response to systemic failure.

In Australia, people still work hard, and problems still exist. But survival is not the default mode. You do not need to constantly strategize just to move around the city or access healthcare. Systems are designed to work without requiring extra effort from individuals. This difference matters, because it shifts responsibility away from the individual and back to the institutions meant to serve the public.

By framing survival as diskarte, we risk obscuring the root of the problem. We praise adaptability instead of asking why adaptation is necessary in the first place. We celebrate resilience while ignoring the exhaustion it produces, particularly among young people who inherit these conditions without having created them. When struggle is romanticized, accountability fades into the background.

This is not an argument that Australia is perfect, nor is it a call to compare countries competitively. Rather, it is a reminder of what should be considered basic. Clean public spaces, accessible healthcare, and reliable systems are not privileges to be earned through patience or ingenuity. They are the result of governance that prioritizes public welfare.

Realizing this abroad does not weaken my attachment to the Philippines. If anything, it sharpens it. Loving a country should not mean accepting its failures without question. Filipino youth have proven time and again that they are capable of resilience. The question now is whether resilience should continue to be a requirement for living a dignified life.

Diskarte will always be part of the Filipino story. But it should be a choice, not a necessity. At some point, we must stop praising survival and start demanding systems that allow people — especially the youth — to live without having to fight for the bare minimum.